Greta Thunberg made me rethink my air travel

It's choppy days ahead as the message of a young climate change activist and the flight shaming movement hits home.

A few weeks ago, a 16-year-old from Sweden arrived in New York. All up, the journey took about two weeks; the Atlantic Ocean had been choppier than she expected. I am referring, of course, to Greta Thunberg, the climate change activist who will be speaking at the UN Climate Action Summit in two days’ time.

One of Thunberg’s superpowers is that she tells a story we think we all know, and might even be turning away from, in a way that makes us sit up and listen. Her trip across the sea was part of the flygskam or “flight shaming” movement; Thunberg has not flown since 2015 and urges others to do the same. Tracking the news reports, I suddenly looked at all my air travel in a completely different way. Specifically: as a travel writer, am I just as bad as fossil-fuel executives and climate change-denying politicians?

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:

Even a few years ago, when rising temperatures still seemed like a far-off hypothetical the likes of Al Gore yammered on about, I would have regarded such a question as verging on hysterical. These days, it seems like the bare minimum of responsibility for someone who would like to see the middle decades of this century, and who hopes that the next generation will not have to fight intercontinental water wars. (I hate that Kevin Costner in Waterworld has turned out to be the great cinematic soothsayer of our time.)

But what to do in an interconnected world? I don’t live in the country of my birth, or even where I grew up. My husband is from another country, and we currently reside in yet another one. We have close family in two other countries separate from any of the ones I’ve mentioned already. And did I mention I write about places I’ve flown to for a living?

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Buying carbon offsets is one route. The New York Times travel desk has announced they will be doing this. Other reporters at the paper fly for work, of course, but only the travel desk will be buying offsets because, they reason, reviewing a new hotel in Hawaii is less essential than sending a dispatch from a war zone.

Choosing airlines that take their carbon output seriously is another. KLM, for instance, has introduced a “Fly Responsibly” campaign which actually encourages travellers to think about taking the train for business meetings instead – which is, admittedly, easier to do in Europe than Australia.

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But while such gestures might make me feel good in the short term, they also annoy me because they put the onus on the individual to fix what only governments, working together, can do. Worse, they give each of us the illusion that we’re changing things when our superpower, collectively speaking, is holding our leaders to account for inaction, apathy and greed.

Plus, it’s worth mentioning that travel can be a positive force. I don’t mean to imply that frequent flyers are inherently more enlightened than everyone else. Clearly that is not always the case, especially if your main motivation for flying is to induce envy in your Instagram followers. Yet experiencing other cultures is an important reminder that people live differently, and according to different priorities. Also that we share this place with other living beings. Put simply, the world does not revolve around us. But then, I’m no scientist, as some of the pollies like to say.Perhaps the right answer to “What can I do?” is “All of the above.”

I should buy the offsets; think carefully about whether I need to travel, and why I’m doing it; and, most of all, vote for the people who give a damn about their grandchildren.